Traffic & Transit
Forest Hills Won't Be Part Of Citi Bike's Major Expansion
The bike-sharing system will hit more than two dozen new neighborhoods in the next four years — but Forest Hills won't be one of them.
FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — New York City's bike-sharing service will hit five new Queens neighborhoods in the next four years in a major expansion, but Forest Hills' biking community won't get a piece of the action.
By 2023 — 10 years after the program launched — Citi Bike will expand further into Queens by adding docks in Sunnyside, Maspeth, Elmhurst, Jackson Heights and Corona, officials announced Tuesday.
Notably, the Forest Hills area, where the city says it plans to move forward with a controversial redesign of Queens Boulevard that adds bike lanes, isn't part of the expansion plans.
Find out what's happening in Forest Hillsfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
"We clearly aren’t happy that Queens Boulevard has this amazing bike lane, but Rego Park and Forest Hills aren’t getting any bike share," a Queens cycling activist told Streetsblog. "That’s insane."
Right now, Citi Bike service in Queens is only available in Astoria and Long Island City.
Find out what's happening in Forest Hillsfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
"Queens has already waited since 2013, and we finally got a tiny sliver that’s useless for 98% of the borough," one resident wrote on Twitter.
Lyft, Citi Bike's new owner, committed $100 million last fall to expanding the program's geographic reach and more than tripling the size of its fleet. Citi Bike has said it will also roll out some 40,000 additional bikes in the coming years.
Details of the expansion, first reported by the New York Post, follow a report showing that Citi Bike's current service area serves a largely white, affluent population while shutting out poor people of color.
More than 70 percent of neighborhoods with a median income less than $20,000 lack access to bike-sharing, while every neighborhood with a median income above $200,000 can easily grab a bike, according to last week's report by New York Communities for Change.
Annual Citi Bike memberships cost $169 for unlimited 45-minute rides, though public housing residents and food-stamp recipients can get one for $5 a month. Cyclists can also buy single rides for $3 or day passes for $12.
Patch editor Noah Manskar contributed reporting.
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